DePaola one of 12 Obama science experts

by JASON HAWK

News-Times reporter

The chances are slim that Brett DePaola will find himself in commando gear, dropped behind enemy lines with an elite black ops team.

But the physics expert -- who graduated from Steele High School in 1973 and is the son of former Amherst mayor Anthony DePaola -- could soon be deployed anywhere in the world at a moment's notice to brief American leaders and allies on top secret information.

DePaola is a professor at Kansas State University and is one of only 12 people chosen this year to serve as scientific advisor to the Obama administration as a Jefferson Fellow.

During a visit last week to his home town, he told the News-Times he was inspired to use his expertise to help the government after hearing then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

"He urged everyone to do what they could to help America," DePaola said. "It sounded very much like John F. Kennedy. It inspired me to do something extra that I'd never considered before to help others."

DePaola will soon pack his bags and move for a year to Washington, D.C., where he starts work Aug. 16 at the U.S. Department of State.

His job there will be to research how science affects policy decisions and foreign relations. DePaola said he could be dispatched at any time to embassies around the globe to translate complex scientific ideas into a form that's easily accessible to politicians and government agents.

He said the Obama administration is much more interested in science than previous administrations.

"We're talking about really smart people, but their training isn't in science," he said. "If I can explain it to freshmen, these guys should be easy."

DePaola holds a physics degree from Miami University in Ohio and a doctorate from the University of Texas. Since joining the Kansas State faculty in 1986, he's taught courses in thermodynamics, architectural physics, and electronics.

Outside the classroom, he continues research in optics, studying the interaction of matter with light, using lasers to move atoms and cause chemical reactions.

"I'm just as likely to be on my hands and knees working in a pool of oil as I am to be in front of a computer," he said, calling himself "more an experimentalist than a theoretician."

While he doubts his specialty will be of direct use to the state department, DePaola said one practical application of his research might someday be detecting explosive elements used to make bombs.

Other Jefferson Science fellows have been experts in immunology, geography, metallurgy, space weather, deforestation, nuclear power, earthquakes, codes, and particle physics.

After returning to academic life, the fellows remain on call as expert consultants for short-term projects over the following five years.